Thursday 12 May 2011

Kopi Luwak

Life isn't just bird watching, golf and rocking gently in a dark corner....sometimes I need to work. This last week I was thinking of ideas for the annual Black box and was making a list of exotic, or do I mean stomach turning, foods that in certain parts of the world are seen as delicacies. This list included monkey brains, traditionally eaten straight from the skull. Birds nest soup, made from the saliva of swifts. Balut, which is a fertilized boiled egg containing the foetus of a duck or chicken, baby mouse wine, tuna eyeballs, live octopus and Rocky Mountain Oysters........young bull testicles.
Plenty of candidates there for consideration....but then I came across Kopi Luwak. This is the most expensive coffee in the world and yet is made from civet cat poo. The Asian Palm Civet eats the coffee cherries which then pass through its digestive system leaving just the beans. The droppings are collected, washed and roasted before being turned into something that people with too much money feel the need to buy. My box shows a palm civet delivering a fresh batch of droppings straight  to the coffee cup.....mmmm.

4 comments:

  1. i love your comment. actually have heard this before about this "coffee", your sculptor brings it to life.

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  2. i really like the sculptor, are those for sale?

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  3. It's not made from the poo!! The beans are pulled OUT of the poo and washed... Have tried it - it is actually a really good cup of coffee! I think beans pulled out, washed and brewed are far more palatable than a foetus egg. Ewwwww!!

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  4. Hi,
    My name is Cecilia, I´m the photo editor of Lugares Magazine (travel magazine from Argentina).
    I saw the picture of the kopi luwak in your blogspot and would like to know if you could gently allow us to publish it in our magazine to illustrate a short article.
    We will write down of course the name of the photographer and your blogspot adress.
    Thank you very much
    Cecilia

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